1The Emergence of Japanese CivilizationMuch mystery—and controversy—surrounds the origins of the Japanesepeople. Before the end of World War II, it was generally believed thathuman occupancy of Japan dated to only about 4000 b.c.and that theinhabitants of that earliest period were Neolithic or New Stone Age peo-ple. Then, in 1949, new archaeological finds dramatically revealed thathumans had lived in Japan from a much earlier time and that there hadbeen a Paleolithic or Old Stone Age before the New Stone Age. Today, aconservative estimate of the date of the beginning of the Old Stone Ageis between 30,000 and 50,000 b.c.Some archaeologists, however, assertthat the age commenced as far back as about 600,000 b.c.1During the glacial age (about 1,000,000–10,000 b.c.), when much ofthe water of the earth’s Northern Hemisphere was drawn into polar icepacks, Japan was connected in the west (Kyushu) and north (northernHonshu and Hokkaido) to the Asian continent, and the present Japan Seawas a lake. Very likely Japan’s first inhabitants crossed over from the con-tinent by foot. In any case, better scientific dating of archaeological mate-rials developed since the end of World War II, including radiocarbon dat-ing, has established that the Old Stone Age, whenever it may have begun,ended with the glacial age about 10,000 b.c.and was succeeded by theNew Stone Age.Since the first discovery of Old Stone Age civilization, some five thou-sand Old Stone Age sites have been uncovered all over Japan. These sitestypically yield roughly shaped stone tools and an assortment of humanbone fragments. Because no full skeletons have yet been found, it hasbeen difficult for archaeologists to make judgments about the racial char-acter of the Old Stone Age Japanese. The rudimentary level of their livesis perhaps best attested by the fact that, so far as we know, they did notadvance culturally to the point of making pottery. And it is for this reasonthat archaeologists have labeled them, rather unpoetically, the “non-pottery” people.The beginning of the New Stone Age is now dated to about 10,000b.c.,when there was a great warming in the Northern Hemisphere, muchof the polar ice mass melted, and Japan evolved into an archipelago. In

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2The Emergence of Japanese Civilizationthe preceding Old Stone Age, people had shaped stones into tools bychipping or flaking or had even used stones as tools just as they foundthem. The main index marking the transition to the New Stone Age wasthe appearance, from about 10,000 b.c.,of stone tools of much higherquality, including skillfully shaped and polished axes, knives, arrowheads,and fish hooks.Another major advance of the New Stone Age was the production ofpottery; and indeed, archeologists now date the beginning of potterymaking in Japan to the commencement of the age itself, or roughly10,000 b.c.This means that, on the basis of what we know about theorigins of pottery making in other countries, the Japanese (or the occu-pants of Japan during the New Stone Age) produced the world’s firstpottery. It is possible that future finds on the Asian continent—for

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